Season Six: Burning Bright
by CalliopeMused
Summary: After Things Change, some things stayed the same.  Canon-inspired, canon hints toward pairings, no Trouble in Tokyo
1. Episode One: Prodigal

_For once, it's a canon story. Enjoy, everybody, and I might just do it again. _

_The story starts just before the end of Things Change, and directly borrows several lines of dialogue from that episode. For foreign readers: a G.E.D. is the American and Canadian equivalent of a high school diploma, no matter what Beast Boy says about them.  
><em>

**Season Six: Burning Bright  
>Episode One: Prodigal<strong>

A normal guy, Beast Boy knew, would be embarrassed to have his cell phone go off while he was talking to a girl. He had one worse. He had a familiar voice coming in loud and clear over his communicator. Terra already looked ready to run, and this couldn't help his case. Beast Boy wasn't ready to remind her of Robin and all the others yet, but Robin had already called.

"Come in, Beast Boy!"

Beast Boy flipped his communicator open quickly. When the static settled into an image, he saw Robin, standing near a damaged cinderblock wall. The second monitor notified him that the Titans were in the Murray Recycling Center, just half a mile away.

"We need your help!"

Robin's image disappeared into static without leaving time for a reply. Beast Boy closed the communicator and looked up at Terra, trying to not sound too desperate.

"Come with me."

Terra shook her head. "You go. You're the Teen Titan. That's who you are. That's not me. I'm not a hero." She finally looked away from her shoes, but with an expression that made her answer clear before any words were said. "I'm not out to save the world. I'm just a girl with a geometry test next period, and I haven't studied."

She backed away, and he barely noticed the high-pitched bell. He saw her in the crowd, for just a few seconds, and then she was gone. He'd lost her. Again.

Numb, he pressed the side of the communicator and raised it to his mouth.

"Beast Boy to Robin. I'm on my way. Over."

He clipped the communicator to his belt. That felt right. He took a deep breath and started to run. He entered the brilliant sunlight with a leap, and an osprey soared upward on a thermal, gaining enough altitude to fly across the bay.

* * *

><p>Cyborg fired a blast from his sonic cannon. It didn't do a thing to harm their opponent, but it gave Raven time to get out of range. "Where the heck is the grass stain?" He was tired of this game. They had been fighting the robotic slime-thing for three days, and hadn't left so much as a dent. He couldn't find any vulnerability in the electronics. Starfire had only hurt her fist delivering a hit at full strength. Raven could barely move the robot with her full concentration, and Robin was staying at a distance. None of Robin's usual tricks had worked, and he couldn't fight something this big with a staff.<p>

"Miyazaki High School," Robin said grimly.

Cyborg shook his head. He didn't need to ask why. "We need backup, Rob. We're barely holding the thing off." Cyborg fired another blast when the thing moved towards Robin.

Robin had to agree with his friend's assessment. "Who should we call?"

"We need someone here fast." Cyborg's eye narrowed when Starfire was pushed back again. "We might be able to handle this thing at full strength, Robin, but we're not."

"I am in agreement," Starfire called from the air, throwing another burst of starbolts at the thing. "We will require assistance, perhaps even with friend Beast Boy's aid."

Raven answered through the communicator. "I can barely touch this thing, Robin. Bring in someone not expected in Jump City."

Robin pressed the side of his communicator. If they weren't asking for anyone specific, then he'd ask everyone. "Calling all Titans, we have a situation at the Murray Recycling Center just off of the Jump City Bay. The opponent is some kind of robot able to adapt itself to be any kind of matter. Starfire has hit it at full strength, Cyborg can't touch it, and it's resistant to Raven's attacks."

"I'm on it."

Robin resisted the urge to glance at the time. If Kid Flash was coming, they'd have backup fast.

"I'll bring Jericho on over with me, good timing for a jam session. Herald out."

Raven's attention remained on the strange robot. It was a technology she had never seen before, and was too smart to be solely programmed. She dropped to the ground beside Robin when Starfire and Cyborg took her place battling the robot directly. "Advice?" she asked curtly. "I can't budge the thing, even with the nastier magic I know. I can open portals beneath it and it doesn't sink."

"You can't move it to another dimension?"

"Can't move it to another dimension, can't pick it up, can't contain it with shields." Raven's eyes flashed, but there was no red in sight. "It's mechanical, it's better than anything we've seen, its builder knows about demons, and it hates us."

"Slade."

Raven glanced over her shoulder, turning back only when Starfire drove the robot back several feet. "I don't have a better guess. The best I can do is block it with a force field when it tries to blend in."

"Be careful, Raven," Robin warned. "If this is Slade, you're his other likely target."

She nodded curtly. "This isn't your kind of fight. Tell Herald that he should be able to send this thing somewhere else."

Raven flew back into the fight, black energy streaming from her hands. Robin was left waiting for just a few seconds before his communicator blipped. Kid Flash was approaching, then. Robin didn't flinch when the Titan blurred into being beside him, and tried not to look surprised that Kid Flash was carrying Jinx. He set her down in the next instant, but the image of a one-time enemy in a bridal carry wasn't going to leave his mind soon.

"Ugh, that is _not _the way to travel," Jinx said, eyes already on the giant robot. "What is that thing, nanotech?" She watched it smoothly take on the characteristics of the cement floor, then shift into air in an attempt to lose Cyborg's heat vision. "Damn. Slade."

"That was fast," Robin said, tearing his eyes from the fight to glance at her.

Jinx grinned at him. "Nanotechnology in Jump City with a hate-on for Titans? Slade. I'll go see if he remembered how to protect his toys from me, shall I? Flash can actually chat about strategy." She darted into the fight, taking a position partially protected by Starfire and Raven.

Flash didn't look away from the robot. "Got a plan?"

"Not quite yet," Robin said. "Herald's coming. If he can open up a portal, and you can push him in… that might work. Raven can barely budge the robot, but it resists all of her attacks. I don't know if Jericho can overshadow something with artificial intelligence."

"Are you sure that's AI?" Flash asked. "It's too smooth, and it reacts way too fast. I think that's artificial intelligence assisted by a remote operator, which means that Slade's watching." Flash shrugged, keeping his eyes on the fight. "If all else fails, we can get Cyborg clear and blast an electromagnetic pulse. The designer might not have planned for that, because he knows you guys can't kill all the electricity without being really careful."

"Good backup plan, but we need—" Robin broke off when Herald arrived, Jericho beside him. The pair of them had started patrolling together, and when they weren't on duty they had music to replace conversation. "Talk to Herald about the first plan, I'll see if Jericho has any ideas about whether he can take over."

Robin kept his eyes toward the fight as he walked the ten feet over to Jericho, but stopped in a defensive crouch just halfway there. The thing had been entirely across the recycling center, and Raven and Starfire had been keeping it at bay. The robot, however, saw an opening between the rest of the Titans, and moved forward too fast for anyone in the fight to react. Starfire screamed a warning, but she couldn't make her way between the lunging machine and Robin.

Jericho ran three steps forward, and he stared defiantly up at the machine. Jinx blasted the robot from behind with a rush of pink when it paused, slowing its next movements. That was the only opening that Herald and Flash needed. Kid Flash had explained the plan very, very quickly, and Herald was nearly as quick in understanding.

Herald created the portal with a blasted note from the trumpet, and Kid Flash knocked the robot through before it started moving again. Even the best AI had no chance of snaring Kid Flash.

The portal closed, and it was a full second before anyone reacted.

Starfire dove for Robin, and lifted him from the ground with her enthusiastic hug. Raven and Cyborg also made their way over, to be sure he was okay in more reserved ways. Cyborg clapped him on the shoulder, Raven gave a small smile. Jinx skipped close enough to Jericho to kiss him on the cheek.

"Good work, Jerry," she said. "You saw ownership straight off too, huh?"

The blonde guitarist nodded, but didn't return her smile.

Herald raised a brow. Jinx only shrugged. "It's rude to gossip, and I'm with the good people now. This one's Jerry's story."

"Anybody else up for debriefing over pizza?" Kid Flash asked. "It was fast, when we threw other powers into it, but… I see what you mean. That thing was built so that your team would have a heck of a time taking it out. I'll give the point for this one to Jericho, for staring down that thing… how'd you know it would stop?"

Jericho shrugged, refusing to look at any of them.

"Gossip's rude, folks, let's move," Jinx said. "So, er… pizza. How far has the rumor mill gone about me switching over to the cool side?"

* * *

><p>The waitress at the Titans' favorite pizza place might have been a little surprised to see the additions to the usual party, but she only asked if Beast Boy would be joining them later. Jinx instantly awarded said waitress a rocking tip for no comment about the ex-criminal in the party. She wanted to give the woman a medal on top of that for leaving a legal pad and a pen at the end of the table, right where Jericho could reach.<p>

Jinx looked over their table. She didn't comment, but she read just what was happening. Starfire and Cyborg had claimed the end seats nearest to the window, as the two Titans most likely to shrug off a direct hit. Starfire had her arm looped through Robin's, and even Raven looked the slightest bit spooked. Herald and Kid Flash had the spots closer to the main Titans, more luck to them, which left her next to Kid Flash and across from Jericho. She didn't remotely envy Kid Flash's place next to Robin. She and Robin were on the same side of the fight, now, but that didn't meant they were all that friendly. The really interesting part was that the Titans had pulled an extra chair over to the table, but that chair was at her end. Somebody was on the shit-list, and his name was Beast Boy.

It was surprisingly easy for the table to start getting along. St—_Cyborg _broke the ice. She had to stop thinking of him as Stone, sometime, and then maybe they could end up friends. He started talking about plans for an all-Titans party somewhere down the road, and it was weird to see Raven involved in that. Jinx knew she hadn't had the most accurate ideas about her one-time enemies, but she had never imagined that Raven would talk about the merits of volleyball against dodgeball on the Tower roof.

"Not so bad?" Kid Flash whispered.

Jinx poked him in the arm, mostly because his whisper was accompanied by a smirk. "Fine. You were right, I did want to come along on this one, but if you want to turn this into a competition…"

"I know, I know." That time, his smile lost all traces of smugness. "It's just nice, you know?"

Jinx did know, but they were starting to have an entire table of Titans staring at them, which wasn't how Jinx wanted to spend her afternoon. "Hi. So, we haven't talked much, so we never talked about the most important question when getting to know somebody."

Even Kid Flash looked like he was expecting something serious; he really should know better. When Jinx looked serious, nine times in ten it was a joke. "Round or deep-dish?" She left a beat, and was very pleased that Cyborg chuckled, Flash smiled, and Robin unbent a little. "We're not in Chicago, so I like round."

One light-hearted squabbling match later, with Jericho writing down his requests in increasingly larger letters, they had the order all set. Cyborg had added a small cheese pizza on at the end, muttering something about vegetarians, and Jinx decided that the green guy had a chance. Robin looked irritated, but Starfire looked wistful. Raven... just looked like Raven.

Beast Boy didn't find them until everyone was leaning back from the table with the satisfied air of a teenager that had just gorged herself (or himself) on pizza. Jericho smiled at Beast Boy, setting the bar for the warmest reception. Jinx didn't mean to be nice, exactly, but nobody else was doing it and she wasn't going to begrudge someone a second chance. She slid the cheese pizza close to Beast Boy's seat.

"Thanks," he said.

The rest of the conversation had been going on without her for a while, so Jinx decided to do the thing properly and talk to the late arrival. "The takedown ended up being a combination of out-of-towners. Slade's been fighting against you guys for too long, and he knows all your usual tricks for destroying robots."

"We're not sure that it was Slade," Robin interjected, but Jinx didn't need to make her case.

Jericho ripped off the top sheet, which had been gradually covered with his part of a conversation with Herald and Kid Flash, and wrote a curt message before shoving the pad at Robin.

"Jericho, guesswork isn't-" Robin stopped at the sheer force of the glare directed his way. Jericho's glare wasn't on par with Batman's worst, but the glare was very impressive coming from an unmasked, green-eyed teenager. "Okay. Slade."

"As I was saying," Jinx said, unruffled, "Slade decided to make a robot for unknown reasons, and all of your classic moves weren't working. I'd still like to know what on earth he did that Raven couldn't touch it, as a professional curiosity, but he didn't think to guard it against some bad luck and getting shoved into one of Herald's portals."

"I have a few ideas for how he learned about my abilities." Raven's expression didn't change, and her voice sounded the same as ever, but Jinx had the feeling that the girl was _very _unhappy about the situation. "We haven't faced him since he decided to deal with my father. That would have been enough."

There were entirely too many fathers wrapped up in the mess, but Jinx could be tactful when the mood struck. She had the feeling that Raven wasn't exaggerating with the insinuated daddy issues, and Jericho definitely wasn't making a big deal of the fact that _Slade _was his father. She wouldn't, either.

"That's the part I didn't understand. Motive," Jinx said. "It's pretty easy to protect electronics from electricity-based attacks, Robin hasn't come out with a new utility-belt trick for a while, and Starfire has brute strength on her side. Make the robot-thing compressible enough and a full-strength hit won't matter much. Herald uses some different magic, Kid Flash breaks the laws of physics constantly, and the robot didn't try for lethal force if I'm guessing right."

Everyone except Jericho and Kid Flash was staring at her. Jinx scowled, especially irritated that Cyborg was surprised. "HIVE anybody? I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that my team was the most profitable in academy history. I just about had to muzzle my idiot teammates to keep them from bragging at the wrong point. We made bank on a bunch of robberies we did out of costume."

Even Kid Flash looked surprised at that, which was no great surprise. She hadn't told him all her secrets.

"My point is that I've led before, and I know about Slade," she continued. "He hired us to break into the Tower, and the only real point was that he was pre-obsessed with Robin and wanted to make an introduction the weird stalker-ish crazy man way." Jinx crossed her fingers under the table, but Jericho didn't look mad at her for the insult to his father. Jerry only looked sad.

"Do you still have... contacts?" It looked like the words were painful for Robin to say, but he did sound polite about it.

"A few," Jinx admitted. "Mostly they're holding out in the hopes that I come back and do something nasty to get my old rep back, to leave them first in line for my list of favorite people, so I don't have anybody powerful on my speed-dial. I'll talk to the guy that ranks above bottomfeeder to see if he has the latest."

It had never been easy to read Raven. In Jinx's experience, the Titan came in "default stoic," "crap we just made her angry," and "if you squint and tilt your head to the right a little she maybe looks a little less gloomy." It didn't help that her voice sounded more like a robot than Cyborg's. Raven was polite, though, and if she hadn't gone out of her way to be welcoming, she hadn't been openly hostile.

Now, Raven looked mildly curious. "Do you know anything about more traditional magic? Spellcasting."

"I took an elective at HIVE, but I was never going to be more than mediocre. We had Wykkyd for magic eventually, but he was like a useless knockoff of you." Jinx was gratified that Cyborg, Kid Flash, _and _Robin snickered. Raven's expression didn't change at all, but Jinx didn't think there were any traces of disapproval.

Raven nodded thoughtfully, but Jinx would have sworn that the girl sounded happy for once. Maybe she was vulnerable to honest compliments. "I don't know if Slade will be able to block your abilities," Raven said. "I can try a few things, and if nothing else work I can resort to using traditional magic against him."

"He'd have to figure out how I can do this first," Jinx said lightly, wiggling her fingers pointedly. "I was born with funky eyes and pink hair, this isn't a phase."

"Unique manifestations are harder to protect against, even with magic. He would have much more trouble using technology." Raven paused, looking contemplative enough that no one interrupted her. "I might look myself, to have an idea what he might be able to try."

Robin had been talking quietly into his communicator for most of the conversation about magic. When he left, he only took the time to nod to the rest of the table, but none of the main Titans were at all surprised. "He's playing damage control with the mayor and the chief of police," Cyborg explained. "He has the most experience, he's the most famous, and he actually likes cleaning things back up afterward the bureaucratic way."

Jinx scratched the back of her neck, feeling a tinge of guilt. Maybe she could have diverted a small percentage of profits toward the resurfacing several of those banks would have needed, but it hardly seemed worth it when their insurance covered so much. (She was almost directly responsible for several hikes in the insurance rates, but she rather thought that was a compliment.)

The conversation moved onto less interesting things while she kept wondering just what Slade had been trying to gain. He'd gone after Robin given the opening, but there must have been several chances over the days of fighting. If he'd wanted to play freaky Jr. Slade games with Rob again, then Slade would have done something a _little _more directed to that purpose. That hadn't been the job Slade would take for himself. That was the kind of thing for-

"Flunkies," Jinx said abruptly, interrupting a talk about video games that had left Raven staring at the crowds and Starfire trying gamely to follow along. She had everyone's attention with the interruption, which made her feel benevolent enough to explain her theory without any further theatrics. "This isn't the kind of thing Slade would usually do himself, he'd farm it out to flunkies. He wants to prove he's back on the map and obnoxious as super glue in the oil can. The problem?"

"There _are _no flunkies," Beast Boy said instantly. He hadn't been her pick for the person to figure it out, but she didn't mind surprises. "They're all on ice in Paris under 24/7 guard."

Kid Flash blinked, Herald scowled, and Jericho was nodding slowly.

"He wanted to say hi," Jinx said, disgusted.

Jericho rolled his eyes and made several rude-looking slashing motions with his hands that were not at _all _complimentary. She thought that the moment where Jericho's hands stilled near his throat was accidental, but she'd already been around Jericho when his trademark scarf was loose and hanging down. The deep scars there had something to do with his father, even if the entire criminal underworld could (reluctantly) agree that Slade hadn't put them there himself, even if he had been closely involved with the event somehow. (The underworld also had agreed completely that whatever had caused Jericho to lose his voice had also been the reason Slade lost his eye. They were pretty sure Slade's wife had been the one to shoot the eye out.)

Jinx picked up Jericho's unused pen on instinct. The rest were trying to figure out Slade's next step, which felt very much like an exercise in futility. Slade had a few basic goals, maybe, but he rarely used the same approach twice. They would do better to talk about increasing security, but it left her time to scrawl out a message. Being Slade's son couldn't be a very comforting secret.

_Text me later on the com if you want. Today probably sucked _

The message vanished from the pad. A few Titans glanced over when the thin strip of paper was ripped away, but not even Cyborg had enough time to see what had been written. Jericho nodded slightly, which was enough of an answer for Jinx. Their friendship might be odd, but Jinx would never deny that they got along.

Robin picked up the check, which Jinx's meager good-guy savings appreciated, but her goodwill only went so far. She'd been nice to her one-time enemies, and she was pretty sure she'd even come close to making Raven crack a smile. Jinx wasn't going to be the one that reconciled Beast Boy with his teammates.

Starfire was going to join Robin in damage-control, and Cyborg was taking Herald, Jericho, Kid Flash, and Jinx to the impromptu party at Titans' Tower. For all of her rep, though, Jinx was happy to see Raven lagging behind the rest of the team. Someone had to talk to the green man, and it looked like the witch was going to be the one that did it.

* * *

><p>Beast Boy wasn't surprised when he didn't merit an invitation in the T-car. He kept his head down while the rest of the group left, and made a bit of a show over putting a second piece of pizza onto his plate. He knew everyone was mad at him, but he had at least expected Cyborg to tell him to get moving.<p>

After Jericho blasted a portal into existence, his teammates walked away, and Kid Flash and Jinx blurred into nothing, Beast Boy was shocked to hear someone clear her throat.

Raven had taken Cyborg's seat next to the window, and she nodded to the seat beside her. Beast Boy knew an invitation when he saw one, so he picked up his pizza and his plate to move up the table.

"You want to miss a little of the party?" Beast Boy guessed. "I know parties aren't your thing, but this crowd is pretty fun."

"I wanted to talk to you, actually. About Terra."

Beast Boy looked away from her level stare, not ready for another lecture on how it hadn't been her.

"I went to the cavern yesterday." Raven was frowning when he turned to look at her again. "So I know that Terra wasn't there, and I think that it's my fault."

"Your fault?" he asked, too surprised to do anything more than parrot her words. With how surprised he was, he was lucky he hadn't turned into a parrot to repeat her words.

"My fault that she's back at all, so perhaps it's to my credit." Raven did not sound sure of that at all, but he thought she was only saying it to be polite. "Do you remember when everyone was turned to stone? Starfire told me about how everything looked, when… you know. Everyone turned back to human when the end of the world was over. I think that happened to Terra, too."

"I suppose that makes sense." Beast Boy shrugged, and put on his best confident look. "She seems happy, too, so… good guys win again. Go us, I'm happy for her."

"You're not happy," she replied simply. He should have known that he wouldn't be able to fool an empath. "I can feel it."

"Well… I can't always be happy," Beast Boy muttered. "It's not like I can resent her over this. She doesn't even remember me," he said dully. "At least she said that she doesn't, and it doesn't matter if she was lying."

"It matters to you." Raven looked impatient to be in a counselor's role, but that might have been because he wasn't ready to listen to wise advice and all-knowing friends. "Maybe she doesn't want to face the one person ready to give her a third chance."

"And if I'm around her, I'm always going to be a reminder of what happened." Beast Boy ripped his napkin in half, focusing on anything but Raven. Sometimes, it was really hard to talk to someone who barely seemed to care. He wasn't in the mood to pretend that he could read her non-expressions. "It's probably best that we aren't together, after everything, but… it's not how this should have ended, if it had to end."

"You need to do something. I don't know if you could have helped us today, but you weren't there."

Beast Boy bit his tongue to cut off the tirade he wanted to make. Losing control wouldn't win him any points with Raven, not when she'd barely lost composure through the world nearly ending. "Nobody wanted to listen to me about any of this. You only cared about the robot."

"The robot going after the city, you mean?" Raven asked wryly. "That does tend to draw our attention. To answer you real point, though, we didn't care nearly as much as you do. We haven't forgiven Terra, but you did as soon as she saved us."

"How could I do anything else? I thought she'd died for us!" Beast Boy protested, loudly enough that several people turned to look. Beast Boy sunk into his seat, regretting yet again that he was green and therefore extremely easy to pick out of a crowd. "Well… she kind of did."

Raven's expression shifted subtly, and not in a way that he'd seen before. He didn't think he wanted to see those hints of sadness again, not when she was usually so careful about hiding them. "She made it personal, before she apparently died for us," Raven said coolly.

"Yes, it was persona, and yes, I know she hurt you, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for ever knowing her, sometimes, but it was…" Beast Boy's rush of words stopped. No matter how hurt he was feeling, there was no need to bring up how Raven had been when she had thought Malchior was her friend. "It's hard to explain, but I trusted her."

"It's hard for me to trust anyone," Raven said, so quietly that no one at other tables would overhear. "If someone hurts me, I'm not likely to give them another opening, let alone give them another chance at friendship. I know that you want to have another chance, Beast Boy, but it felt like your next chance with Terra was more important than helping us."

"I felt like she mattered more than the Scooby-Doo mystery of the week," he replied. " I guess… no, it's not a guess. I shouldn't have put the extra stress on you guys, and should have asked if you could work without me for a few days instead of vanishing like that." He sighed, pushing the pizza away entirely. "I feel like at the end of the day, the robots always win."

"At the end of the day, protecting people from someone like Slade will always win," she corrected.

"Do you think that really means that at the end of the day, _Slade _is the only one that wins? Our entire _lives _revolve around what the daily villain has planned out, and we're always on call. I'm not sure this is what I want to do anymore," he confessed. "I'm eighteen, I have a G.E.D. instead of a real diploma, and sometimes I really want to have a normal life for a while."

"Sometimes, I wonder how I got here. How any of us got here," Raven admitted. "I usually blame Starfire."

Beast Boy laughed even though Raven probably wasn't joking. "She's going to keep fighting, especially if Robin gets his head out of his cloaca. They both have reasons, big ones, but I'm feeling tired of all of this." He rubbed the back of his neck, because he knew what he had to say. "I know I let you all down today, Raven, and I'm sorry."

"An apology goes a long way," Raven said, and he knew he was already forgiven. Since the world almost ended, and she had been the one to make it better, she'd been more patient with all of them. He supposed it was because the weight of the world _had _been on her shoulders that whole time, but she hadn't realized that she could share it with them. "Just apologize to the rest and this can be behind us. We're all okay, and we all can move on from this.

_Move on._ That was the important part. "You're right," he said. "And I'll apologize tonight, I promise, but I'm going to take the long way home. I have to think, and you know getting me to think is hard enough without an audience," he joked, feeling a tiny bit more like himself.

"You're better at it than you think," Raven said as she pushed her chair. "Good luck finding what you're looking for."

"Thanks," he said, already planning what he'd have to do. It was time that he had closure, about Terra, and he knew exactly what he would do. "I'll see you back at the Tower," he promised. "Probably after the party's over, but I'll catch up with everybody another time."

Raven nodded to him before vanishing into a portal, but he knew she could read his emotions. He wasn't ready to talk about what he needed to do; it was time for action.

By the time Beast Boy returned to the tower, he had left a note just where Terra's feet had been, held down by a small pile of rocks. It was vague enough that it might not mean much to anyone else, but if Terra was ready to say goodbye, he would be, too. It was past time he paid more attention to the team he had instead of the dreams that he'd had.

When Beast Boy left that cave and that note behind him, he didn't look back.


	2. Episode Two: Second Nature

_As best as I can determine, Robin was seventeen when the Teen Titans were formed. Raven was fourteen. I haven't found a record for the ages of the other Titans, so I've created ages that seemed right. _

**Season Six: Burning Bright  
>Titans Divided<strong>

In a once-empty warehouse in Jump City's underutilized industrial district, a small wealth of monitors and computers was crowded into the small security booth that had once held a comparatively primitive closed-circuit camera array. The floor of the warehouse was covered with several models of the robotic shapeshifter created thanks to cribbing from the work of several scientists.

The robot had been perfectly designed to fight the Titans to exhaustion, but Slade had forgotten a variable. Something in their worldwide adventures had bent Robin's pride to the extent that the boy had called for help. That changed things, and it changed them in a way that Slade had not anticipated.

It was almost time to strike against the Titans in the one way guaranteed to hurt them, and to discount the possibility of outside help. He only needed a few more resources. Every last component of his new creation was easily obtained by a motivated man of some means.

* * *

><p>After a full week with no battles to fight, and with no signs of Slade, the Titans had little to do but think about the important question: were they going to be the Teen Titans forever?<p>

Robin was seventeen when the Teen Titans had formed, and at twenty, he wasn't a teenager anymore. Raven was only seventeen after three years with the Titans, but not one Titan was surprised to learn that she had already earned her G.E.D. thanks to online coursework and the social security card that had appeared in her name just weeks after the Teen Titans were formed.

"Wait, when did you pick up a diploma?" Cyborg asked, leaning forward far enough that he nearly toppled off of the couch. Starfire was sitting primly in midair, legs crossed, and Raven was perched on the armrest with an open book disregarded in her lap. That was the only reason all five of them could sit comfortably in the once-large common room. "We would've held a graduation party for you."

"Four months ago," Raven admitted. "I'm not exactly up for regular parties, and my seventeenth birthday party was enough. I had to do something when we had too many people here." In contrast to her very dramatic sixteenth birthday, her seventeenth had passed with a small cake, one candle, and a short-lived paper party hat. Raven had complied with the headgear for a grand total of two minutes on the combined coaxing of both Starfire and Beast Boy. The team had wisely decided against a tiara.

"I had mine before I turned nineteen." Robin didn't know what his parents would have wanted, or if they would have been happy that he earned one degree, but Bruce Wayne would not be satisfied without a college education. "I'm waitlisted for Hudson University. I know we haven't talked about it, but I feel like we've fought enough battles."

"Friend Robin, you have not told us!" Starfire's usual cheer was subdued. "I had not realized that our time might come to an end so soon, and I have not yet finished my General Education Development. The mathematics are most diverting, as well as the sections regarding proper grammar, but studies of the social variety are quite challenging. I had not realized that America had such a long history, or that so much of it was unhappy."

"You're making good progress, Star, and there are a lot of good parts the textbooks don't talk about." Cyborg had been tutoring her in history and chemistry; Tamaran had a much different view about how the world worked, and she had drawn several diagrams on the whiteboard he'd bought. When he wasn't teaching Starfire, he was teaching Beast Boy physics and calculus. Calculus was beyond the scope of the G.E.D. but Beast Boy's attention span was pretty incredible when he put his mind to it. Unfortunately, Beast Boy rarely put his mind to it. "I passed it a while ago," Cyborg continued, "but my dad would not have been happy if I didn't have that much done by eighteen. I've thought about applying for college sometime. Engineering is a pretty obvious fit."

"You'd be great at that," Robin said thoughtfully. "It's been a while since Batman and I have really gotten along, but a mutual friend is really pushing that it's past time we talked this over. I'm his heir, legally, so I'll probably go into business."

"I'm thinking about veterinary medicine, probably at a zoo," Beast Boy said to no one's great surprise. "Exotics are pretty easy when you can literally speak the language."

"I am unsure which course of education that I would like to pursue, or if I would choose to attend a university where I would be an object of much attention," Starfire said slowly. "Truly, it will be difficult to blend in when the differences between the other students and I are so obvious."

"I can take care of that," Cyborg promised. "I've been playing with my old hologram rings for a while. It was going to be a surprise, but now is as good of a time as any. I've made one for everybody, in case we wanted to go on a field trip where nobody knew our codenames. I want to go to college under my real name."

"You've been pretty quiet, Raven." At Robin's comment, the team turned to look at their stoic friend. "Are you planning on applying? The due dates for all the colleges aren't coming up for a few months yet, and it might be time for all of us. Starfire has an alias, too, and I think all of us could use the break."

"I think I want to have a look at Gotham, and look up where my mother lived. That is, if you can talk your guardian around. He isn't very fond of magic, or demons." Raven had never mentioned her misadventure in Gotham, traveling where her mother had grown up, and finding the then-abandoned building where a cult had performed the ritual that brought Trigon to earth in the form of a human man. "He wasn't exactly diplomatic in asking me to leave his city. It turned out that an associate of his knew something about the prophecy. I wanted to get as far away from him as possible, and tickets to San Francisco were cheap that week. I was tired of big cities and big crowds, so I came to Jump City on the bus." The speech was one of the longest that Raven had ever made, and not one Titan wanted to interrupt.

"I am most glad that you did so," Starfire said when it was clear that Raven was finished. "Our team would not have been complete without you, or without any one of us. I lost my parents long ago, and my sister has long acted as if we are not family. You all are my family, now."

"You're more family than the Doom Patrol ever was." Beast Boy was more and more capable of seriousness, and ever since he had led reinforcements against the Brotherhood of Evil, the team had treated him accordingly. "So—um—thanks."

"Maybe we all can go to Gotham. Hudson University is... well..." Robin looked embarrassed, a rare sight. "It's a little past the income we've all built up from Jump City, but Gotham University has really good scholarships.

"I have a few connections that would be willing to give all of us great recommendations for community service. Batman's come a long way when it comes to backgrounds, Raven, and we fought about that for most a year. He actually conceded an argument, and I can tell you exactly how many times I've won. That's twice." Robin did not look inclined to elaborate.

"Stubborn guy," Cyborg said, already adjusting his plans for the hologram rings. "I can deal with Gotham. My dad and I are getting along good now, but both of us could use a little more space. He was always the scientist that didn't know what to do with a kid, and when my mom died, I almost did. Dad was the one that put in all the hardware, and all of it was his experiment. Both of us could barely talk without missing Mom, so we stopped talking."

Starfire floated close enough to take his hand. "I know it is never quite the same, but I sympathize. I do believe that all of us but Raven have lost our mothers."

"We were never exactly close to start with." Raven's tone was wry, and bordered on dismissive, but she didn't look away from the four of them. "She ran away from home when she was seventeen. A cult that worshiped Trigon took her in, and when she was pregnant by Trigon in human form, she thought that her parents would get hurt if she went home. Azar and the rest of the monks took her in when she didn't have anywhere else to go, and by the time I was born, she was a different person."

"Have you been back to Azarath, friend Raven?" Starfire asked, hope clear in her voice.

Raven's expression closed entirely. She hadn't done that to any of them since her sixteenth birthday. "I think all of them died. Trigon went there, first, and the protections weren't enough. I tried to go back, to tell them that the prophecy was wrong, and the only thing left was a dove." Her voice was entirely dull, but they knew better than to assume she wasn't hurting. "I'll apply tomorrow. I don't want to start on my own, and all of us could use a change in scenery."

"I am most sorry to hear such sad tidings." Starfire knew better than to attempt embracing her friend when Raven's control was already tested. Her friend still preferred to handle her sadness alone.

No one said a word for a full minute after Raven vanished in a flash of black edged in white.

"I think we're making her favorites for dinner tonight, even if she won't come down. We'll give her a few hours on her own," Cyborg said, sounding confident enough that none of them imagined protesting. "Beast Boy, you're on dinner delivery if she won't come down."

Beast Boy's voice had changed two months before, after causing several embarrassing moments when attempting to order a criminal to stop. His voice still squeaked when "me?" popped out.

"You talked her down after Malchior, she talked you down after Beast. It's your thing," Cyborg said easily. Beast Boy's shell-shocked look only confirmed that this wasn't the time to talk about Beast Boy's yearlong interest in their moody teammate. The growing attention was subtle, and subtle enough that even Beast Boy might not notice yet, but a guy always knew when his best friend was halfway up to the moon over a girl.

"It would be of great comfort to her," Starfire agreed. "I will look into this Gotham University to see what programs are offered. Raven has been most reticent thus far, but I believe that she will be interested in literature. She has taught me much about Earth novels, and introduced me to several that I enjoy very much."

"I think it's research-time for all of us." Robin glanced toward Raven's room, but then looked to the still-shocked shifter. "I know Gotham University has a surprisingly good animal sciences department, for an city-based university. I don't know her really well, but a costumed friend of mine is a freshman there."

"They have a few patents on mechanized prosthetics, too," Cyborg added. "Anybody else in for the ride? We all need some time without a whole city to look after, I think, and Gotham's in good hands."

"I'm convinced," Beast Boy said. "We're still a team."

They might have said more along those lines if the alarm hadn't blared for the first time in a week.

Moments later, a dry-eyed Raven appeared in the common room with no signs that she had retreated away from the rest of them. "I can get us there fastest, if none of you mind traveling by portal."

Beast Boy still regretted his blurted comment about the relative creepiness of traveling via the Raven Express. He knew she was a little self-conscious about the sliding sensation, but he knew he'd made it a little better. Comparing it to apparition in the Harry Potter books had helped, and she even had free points to feign shock that he had read one book, let alone seven. Sometimes, he actually understood Raven's carefully hidden sense of humor.

Robin answered for the team. "Let's go."

* * *

><p>By the time they reached the Jump City Credit Union, the deed was already done. Slade was far more professional at bank robberies when he had the motivation, and the motive was clear when a shaken bank manager showed them the empty vault. There was a small placard that said only "The TRuce is over," with a distinct circle around the R.<p>

No one knew what to say, seeing their leader's symbol in Slade's note, but Beast Boy broke the silence.

"Again?" Beast Boy said indignantly. "I mean, no offense, dude, but it's getting a little old that Slade's always interested in you or Raven."

Raven's brow rose. "Do you really want Slade interested in you?"

"Well, no, but it's the principle of the thing." Beast Boy's emphatic gestures seemed to be taking the place of logic as well as serving as a distraction from a new subtext, but no one minded. Robin and Cyborg were taking the time to scan the emptied vault before Beast Boy tried several smell-sensitive morphs, one right after the other. "No good. He laid down false scents, and I already know he went straight from here into a waiting car. I got that much on the way in."

"We should split up," Robin said. "There's no way we cover all of Jump City together. It's time that we stopped him once and for all, if we can find a prison that will hold him."

"I'm with Raven." Cyborg spoke up before Robin could assign teams. "We need to split the trackers, and the pair of us have worked on this before. BB's on the other team."

"I can search from the air alone." Starfire's words were calm and left no room for opposition. "Slade does not have the same obsession with my person. It will be best that Raven and Robin do not stay together, as they would be too tempting for Slade to pursue."

"Deal," Beast Boy said before Robin could protest. "I can track him when we get closer. He might think to block his scent out, again, but I can follow the false trail that he uses. I just smell for the place without a scent."

Robin would not have chosen Beast Boy as his partner, but he couldn't back out now without angering his entire team. "Let's move out." He had planned to work with Starfire, like they usually did, and he didn't like that she would be alone in the air. He and Beast Boy rarely had anything to say to each other that wasn't about who was making dinner. When they first met, Beast Boy's hero-worship had been off-putting even as it made impossible for Robin to talk to him. Then it had been jealousy over the motorcycle, disgust with Robin's eating habits, anger about Terra, depression about Terra, and most recently, hope that Terra was alive after all.

Surprisingly, Beast Boy didn't say much. He regularly changed forms to track the lack of scent, but his focus was impressive. Sometimes, Robin forgot that Beast Boy had led the team that pulled everybody's bacon out of the fire.

Robin was the one to break the silence. "Do you think we're getting close?"

"I'm guessing he headed for a warehouse again, it seems like his usual deal," Beast Boy replied without hesitation. "I picked up a car that drove through here recently, and the non-scent coming out of it. We're on the right path, and we're not far behind him."

"Look, Beast Boy, I really should… I feel like I've been unfair to you."

Beast Boy's left ear twitched. "It's fine," he said. "Really, Robin, no hard feelings. Let's focus on the case."

The role reversal left Robin stunned, but he had to agree. Beast Boy was the one to lead them to the correct warehouse, and to find the open door with minimal signs of traffic. That was their first mistake. They assumed that taking the unused door would be novel thinking, not the most predictable move that they could make. Robin had entered first, but that didn't matter. As soon as Beast Boy was framed in the open doorway, several tranquilizer-like rounds fired into his torso, easily penetrating the spandex blend of his costume.

Every one of the four darts was filled with a noxious green fluid that rapidly disappeared into his teammate's chest.

Beast Boy fell to the ground before curling in on himself just inside the doorway of the warehouse. He didn't seem capable of moving any further. "You should get out," Beast Boy gasped. "Call Raven, she knew what to do last time."

"Beast Boy, what..."

"Can't control this," Beast Boy gritted out. "Turning into the beast again, and I don't think he liked you last time. He might remember."

Robin took several steps back, but he wasn't going to leave his teammate this time. "Titans come in," Robin said into the com as he scanned the warehouse for additional threats. "I could use some help at the warehouse six east and four north from the Murray Recycling Center."

"What is the sitch?" Starfire asked immediately, her delight in asking the question quite obvious. "It is a reference to that most diverting documentary!"

"The sitch? Ah…" Robin glanced at Beast Boy, averting his eyes for his teammate's sake when his uniform began to tear away. "I think Beast Boy's about to tear my throat out, literally, but I'm not leaving him with Slade in the area."

"Uh, Beast Boy?" Cyborg said incredulously. "Remember that we _like _Robin."

"I don't think he can hear you, Cy, or if he can, he's not going to take it in. I don't think his were-beast form is so big on verbal comprehension." Robin glanced again toward the corner, bracing himself when he saw that the change was nearly complete. He wouldn't let Beast Boy end up as some toy of Slade's. "I would try to get him out of here, but he won't fit through the only door we've tried. Slade had a trap set up that dosed Beast Boy full of toxin."

"Raven's already on her way," Cyborg reported. "Were-beast likes her best, but I don't think we need to worry too much. He changed when Raven had the bad birthday without maiming anybody." Cyborg paused before speaking again. "Be careful. I'm not sure how much protection Beast Boy is right now, and you and Raven are Slade's favorites."

Beast Boy had entirely transformed. "He's up," Robin said quietly. "He doesn't look angry."

Indeed, the were-beast looked nothing more than quizzical as it padded closer to Robin. Robin held his ground, but needn't have worried about a sudden change in attitude. Beast Boy was still in there, somewhere, and somehow the two of them had made peace after everything.

"Um, hey," Robin said directly to Beast Boy, leaving the speaker on his communicator on. "Maybe we can be friendly this time?"

The were-beast's low growl was not reassuring. Taking the hint, Robin let the beast look him over. As long as the claws stayed on the cement and the fangs stayed away, Robin wouldn't try anything fancy. "Guess I should've learned how to deal with animals from you at some point. I know it's all about posture, but the only posture I've learned is how to intimidate people with whatever height I had at the time."

That tone worked a little better. The ruff of fur around the were-beast's head settled into something more flat, and the growling ceased.

"We really need to talk later. About before."

The beast studied him carefully before settling back slightly. Robin thought that was the closest to agreement that they could come.

"Raven's about there." Cyborg's voice was quiet over the communicator. "I'll tell BB to give you the shot, Robin."

"Thanks, Cyborg."

Before Robin could say anything else to the were-beast, Raven walked into the warehouse through the open door. She had one of Beast Boy's spare uniforms draped over her arm. She didn't smile when she saw the two of them getting along peacefully, but she gave one of her rare looks of approval. "I see I needn't have hurried," Raven drawled. Relief was all too easy to read for people that knew her well.

Robin was pretty relieved, too, but he didn't want to look like he'd doubted Beast Boy.

"I didn't think I'd see you again," Raven said directly to the were-beast. There was no softness in her monotone—she sounded crankier than usual, even—but the words had an immediate effect on Beast Boy. "I imagine you're entirely fueled by testosterone right now, and I'm very impressed that you and Robin were getting along so well."

The beast settled back on his haunches, suddenly looking like a very large, very protective dog.

Raven acted as if the response was totally normal. Robin was sure that she had met the were-beast all of once, but she had been the one to support Beast Boy through everything. Robin was still kicking himself for how he had acted toward his teammate. "I don't suppose you're ready to change back."

The beast growled softly. Raven showed no signs of fear. "I thought not, but it was worth the attempt." Raven kept her eyes on the were-beast even as Starfire arrived. "Starfire can partner with you now, Robin," Raven said. "The pair of you can look over the warehouse. If Slade attempts tangling with Beast Boy right now, he'll deserve what's coming."

Robin looked over his teammate and found no trace of reason in his eyes. "He's going to be all right?" he asked. "I mean, he's going to change back."

"Eventually," Raven said. "When he lets me, I'll take him to the shore outside the Tower. It's a lot more secure. Cyborg already headed back so that he wouldn't be patrolling alone."

"You're okay waiting, then?" Robin knew that patience wasn't one of Raven's favorite virtues.

"Fine," she promised. "Completely fine. I owe him one, anyway."

* * *

><p>When Beast Boy felt the change finally recede, he relaxed for all of four seconds. That's how long it took him to realize that he was outside, he was naked, and Raven was about five feet away. To his eternal relief, her back was turned, and one of his uniforms was lying on the ground beside her. She sensed something about the change, of course, and then the uniform rose into the air until it was a convenient height to grab. Beast Boy doubted that he had ever gotten clothing on faster.<p>

"Um. Yeah. Thanks," he said when he was clothed, pretty sure that he was going to be purple for the next hour. "What happened?" He half-collapsed beside her on 'their' rocks. Changing into that form always left him exhausted afterward.

"Slade happened."

Beast Boy shuddered. He wasn't sure if that was due to fear or rage. Slade scared him with the way he fixated on people and didn't let go, and contrary to his earlier words, he didn't really want to be next. He only wanted Raven to be left out of it. "Again? Why can't he leave me—er. Metaphorical thought."

"I get the feeling we really do need to talk." Raven's gaze alone was enough to make him realize that he wasn't going to escape talking about it. "You were hiding something earlier."

"Y-yeah. When I was trying to talk to Terra… well, a Slade-bot found me. He seemed to know things." He self-consciously drew his legs up to his chest. "He knew she didn't want me around. I know now that I wasn't being fair to her. I should be happy she's alive and that she has a life again. I don't have to be a part of it. She's safer if I'm not, it's rational."

"Caring about people isn't rational, logical, or easy." The admission wasn't as out of character as Raven liked to pretend. "It's still worth it."

Beast Boy smiled; he knew how much it took for Raven to say things like that. It meant a lot that she'd say them for him. "I do care about her, but Slade would use her against me. He'd get to her to get to—Robin. I didn't, like, do anything?" He remembered telling Robin to get out, and he knew that Robin wouldn't have ran to leave Beast Boy to Slade.

"Growled," Raven promised. "That's it. He had the sense to stand down. You were irritated with him, he thinks, but you didn't even try to go after him."

Beast Boy sighed, reaching for the fuzzy memories of Robin holding his hands out in surrender. That definitely hadn't come easy to the Boy Wonder. "I'm going to catch so much hell…"

Raven's eyes narrowed. "No. You won't."

"I should, Rae. I mean, okay, we don't exactly get along one-on-one." He rubbed a hand through his always-messy hair. "I don't want to be a danger to anybody. Slade can dose me with toxin again, and now he knows that I'm one trigger away from attacking Robin when he does."

"You aren't a danger to me, and I won't let this drive the team apart. Not after everything. You've put up with me when I've done worse, and I hardly mind your were-beast form. When it's just me… you're calm, and it feels like the world went quiet. I can be sure which belong to me." It seemed that Raven was having a long day of long conversations.

"You like him?" Somehow, that surprised him more than Raven volunteering to take the lead in a social situation. "I mean—me, I guess. It is me, even if it scares me."

"I think that your were-beast likes me, too. Starfire told me that you changed. When I thought I was going to die," Raven blurted.

"I couldn't hold back." Beast Boy suddenly knew what that meant, and that Raven might know, too. She was an empath. He never knew just how much that would mean for her. "It was the one time that I entirely agreed with it. I didn't want you to die."

She seemed to miss just what that meant for both of them. Beast Boy couldn't tell if he was hurt or relieved but that was the usual state of things with Raven. He never could tell how he felt or how she might feel in return.

"It's not a chore to come for you," she said quietly. "It's like you need _me. _Nobody's needed me like that before."

If that was what it meant to her, he just might be able to trust the Beast. Maybe he could even stop worrying about just what she thought about him. Sometimes he was convinced that she'd always be convinced that he was a moron compared to her. "I don't feel so alone when you put it that way." He half-smiled when he realized just why they could talk so long without him irritating her. "I guess that it's for the best you caught me when I don't have terrible jokes ready." He just wanted to make her smile, sometime, but she had started to smile on her own. She didn't need him for that.

"Not all of them are that terrible," Raven allowed thoughtfully. "Just the vast majority of them."

Even that made him feel better. "Thanks, Rae."

"Raven," she corrected.

"Raven," Beast Boy agreed. No matter what had happened or would happen with Terra and with Slade, he'd always have his moodiest friend. That would last even longer if he managed to keep his crush on said teammate hidden from her empathy.


	3. Episode Three: Versailles

_Short chapter, this time, but there are several hints about what I'm doing next._

**Season Six: Burning Bright  
><strong>**Episode Three: Versailles **

Half a world away from a late-night investigation into Slade's latest attack against the Titans, Jinx and Kid Flash were breaking up in the city of lovers.

"I guess I feel like I'm never going to be enough to keep your attention," Jinx told him. Her hair was pulled back into an messy ponytail. That change alone made her look like the punk American teenager she was instead of the teenage villain she had been. The dark sunglasses let tourists and Parisian locals alike assume that she liked pink hair, not that the pink was her natural state of being.

Kid Flash was fidgeting, his natural state of being. "I was really hoping you wouldn't put it that way."

"Because it's true?" Jinx's expression was softer than any of the original five Titans might have expected. "It's alright, Flash, and I'd rather have us break up before one of us gets too involved. The way things were going, that would have been me." It might have taken an empath to realize that Jinx was lying, and that her feelings already were a magnitude greater than Kid Flash's.

She knew that the allure of tempting the bad girl had been a large part of what he had seen in her. He didn't like to admit to that truth, and she wasn't much more fond of it.

"I guess I just move too fast," Kid Flash said quietly as he stirred his coffee a little too vigorously. He had every last drop caught with his napkin before any of the coffee could touch Jinx's hand or the sleeve of her favorite shirt. "I don't think anyone else could have made it last this long, though. You'll always mean a lot to me."

It hurt too much to not make the offer. She had to pretend at strength. "Friends?" she asked.

"Always," he promised.

A hug would have been too much; a handshake wouldn't have been enough. They settled for a rather awkward nod between them before they separated for good. Kid Flash was heading out to guard against trouble at a local gathering of world leaders while Jinx took up the shift they should have taken together. Instead, Jinx would be guarding the vast hall of frozen supervillains all by herself.

* * *

><p>In Jump City, the other three Titans had been quite busy while Raven and the were-beast spent time on the shore at the base of Titans' Tower. Cyborg had been the one to find an entire room showing traces of recent electrical activity. He found several tiny traces that made him confident that the room had been the hub for several computers as well as a monitoring system, though they only found the few surveillance cameras left thanks to Cyborg's work.<p>

There had been one item left in the empty room: a last dart filled with a green fluid. Testing later that night proved it was a match for the toxins that had first triggered Beast Boy's most dramatic transformation.

They regrouped the next morning at breakfast. Cyborg had worked through almost the entire night but he had coaxed Robin and Starfire into getting some rest. Cyborg was the only one awake when Raven and Beast Boy stumbled out of a portal and into their respective rooms at four in the morning. Despite that late arrival, both of them were awake and ready to go at eight.

"Let's talk motives," Robin said grimly. He had been awake and pacing at half past seven, and had not been calmed by Starfire's arrival in the common room fifteen minutes later. "I don't like that he's doing something new. I'd expect him to try for me or for Raven after everything that's happened."

Beast Boy cleared his throat. "I—um—might have happened to run into a Sladebot when the mess with probably-not-Terra was going on. So that might be part of that."

For once, Robin didn't lose his temper at a fact about Slade that he hadn't known. "Great. So he's branching out. Cyborg, we need to talk later about letting a few of us know how to work your manual backups in case he keeps branching out and gets an EMP."

Starfire bit her lip. "Please, what is an 'EMP?' It sounds most serious."

"Electromagnetic pulse," Cyborg explained. He was keeping a strong front, but it was hard to hide the worry that Slade would think to come after him next. He wasn't as invulnerable as he had once thought. "It can knock out most electronics, including our communications and a good chunk of my higher systems. The baseline will be fine unless he got something to back up any EMP he can throw at me. My heart's not run by batteries, and same with about every organ but my head.

"That said, Robin's right. I do have a few manual overrides that we can go through at training today. I guess it's past time I mentioned that all the electronics are my dad's work." Cyborg had heard enough from his teammates about their past troubles. "He put me back together after an explosion in the lab almost killed me. The explosion did kill my mom. My dad and I only started forgiving each other for that in the last year."

"What about Starfire?" Raven asked.

Starfire frowned until her brow creased. "I am unsure, friend Raven. I am quite vulnerable should I be away from the sun for more than a few days, but I do believe that is the treatest weakness of Tamaraneans."

Raven shook her head. "Except emotions, Starfire. To me, emotions are just as real as what you can hear or see. You're the loudest and brightest to the extent that your emotions are almost tangible."

"I am unsure what he would do beyond threatening any of you, or even a civilian. I am sure that he realizes that I would not allow one of you to come to harm." Starfire's clear emotions were a weakness, she knew, but she could and would not have it any other way. Her emotions were also her greatest strength.

"Same here. Since Robin and I are cool…" Beast Boy hesitated, but grinned at Robin's approving nod. "Cool. Anyway, Beast-dude is fine with all of you, now, but Slade might not realize that Robin isn't a threat to him anymore. Slade probably does know that Raven is Beast-dude's favorite."

"I am most sorry that she was the only one of us to believe you from the start," Starfire said even as Cyborg directed a questioning look Beast Boy's way. "An apology is long overdue."

"Same here, grass stain," Cyborg said, dropping the question he had wanted to ask. "What just happened proves that the were-beast isn't going to be a threat to any of us."

Beast Boy flushed and felt all the more embarrassed for it. He knew how odd the red looked against green skin. "We're all cool, promise. I'm just glad I don't have to worry about him—me—hurting any of you. The beast form is smart enough to think, and I know he's smart enough to protect any of you."

"Can you take the form voluntarily?" Raven asked. She hadn't been there when Beast Boy changed in the fight against her father, but Starfire had told her all that there was to know.

"I'm not sure. So far, it's only happened with the toxin or when I'm scared beyond all reason." Beast Boy managed to keep the words light with the mature sense of humor that had been developing rapidly since the defeat of the Brotherhood of Evil. "That might happen again if Slade goes after anybody."

"Maybe that's the solution." Cyborg nodded toward the kitchen table. "Come on, let's talk over breakfast. We have the fancy unfertilized eggs, so all of us can handle an omelet. BB's first so it doesn't get any meat traces."

"Thanks, Cy!" Beast Boy said as he took his usual seat.

"No problem, all of us need to start thinking about this without empty stomachs. Robin, you look like you have an idea brewing." Cyborg turned to their leader while balancing two cartons of eggs, two bags of shredded cheese, leftover breakfast sausage, a large bowl and a frying pan besides. "What do you have?"

"I think we had the right idea last night, but the wrong execution. We've been waiting for Slade to make his move and then reacting to whatever he's had in mind. Maybe it's time for us to go after _him._" Robin drummed his fingers against the table as the crazy thought started solidifying into a workable plan. "I'll talk to Batman about getting something that might hold him. After all that's happened, he wants Slade locked up about as much as we do."

"I'll talk to my dad," Cyborg promised. "If he can replace most of my limbs and an eye, he can come up with something to get Slade out of our hair—or off my head. I don't want to wait for whatever he comes up with next."

"We'll fight him together," Robin said. "All of us. Even if we have to split forces to find him, we'll make sure each group has someone that can move fast. That means we're splitting up Raven and Starfire."

"Agreed," Raven replied curtly. "Beast Boy's with me, in case Slade means to repeat his experiment. I know how to talk Beast down the fastest."

"Robin, Star, I'd just slow you down," Cyborg said. He knew his strengths. Speed wasn't one of them anymore. "Raven can get both me and BB around quickest."

"It would be far easier for me to carry Robin, should he agree." Starfire beamed when Robin nodded. "We shall be able to fly, then, and cover ground most speedily."

Robin smiled. The expression didn't bode well for Slade. "We'll start tonight."

* * *

><p>It was very quiet in the vast hall of frozen supervillains. Normally it would be easy to twitch at the shadows and to step carefully to keep her steps from echoing in the huge space. Jinx let her slow steps from her black boots ring through the space and wondered if any of her one-time allies, one-time enemies could hear from where they were trapped.<p>

Her slow pace wasn't entirely due to the thoughtful mood. She was carrying an experimental piece of technology over her shoulder, technology that just might work. The Titans weren't heartless, and they weren't stupid. Should the warehouse of enemies catch fire or otherwise become dangerous, they would free every last villain before allowing them to die, and hope that they would be able to keep them all contained. Jinx hadn't been interested in the broad-spectrum cannon that Cyborg had developed to free everyone at once. She had brought the one-person model made in case that they'd need to question one villain or another, and she was lugging the heavy thing across the entire floor on her own while wishing she'd had superstrength instead of bad luck. The other Titans optimistically said that she could alter probability to make the worst outcome happen, but that was a fancy way of dressing up who and what she was. She was bad luck, plain and simple, and the other Titans weren't likely to accept her without Kid Flash as her chaperone.

Besides, she had one more debt to pay.

When she finally had the machine in place, she took a guilty look around the hall. She had two hours before Herald and Jericho were on duty. She couldn't waste them or risk that the pair would show up early to waste time with her.

No one was there. Jinx fired up the glorified hair-dryer and started working as quickly as she could, starting with Mammoth's feet. Gradually, the frozen casing vanished away to nothingness until she'd worked up to her one-time teammate's dense head. He would be far easier to talk around than Gizmo.

Sure enough, he blinked at her with the sharpest expression he was capable of producing. "Jinx?"

It was easy to smile at his instant acceptance. Mammoth never would have the brainpower necessary to hold a grudge against someone he considered a friend. "Hey, Mammoth. It's past time for a jailbreak." She shifted the heavy de-freezing device over to his hands. His strength was better suited to the task and she wanted her hands free in case Gizmo reacted poorly to freedom. "Here, let's get Gizmo out."

Her short teammate took a while to thaw from Mammoth's clumsy work with the de-freeze ray. When the last of the ice was finally gone, she was entirely unsurprised to be the subject of a glare so cutting that he might have been able to melt ice with his gaze alone.

Gizmo scowled further when she didn't step away. "What are _you _doing here, and what are you doing?"

"Like I told Mammoth, it's time for a jailbreak. The goodie two-shoes crowd won't expect me to make an about-face." The goodie two-shoes crowd would never forgive her, either, and when her number was finally up they might freeze her just as solid as everyone else that had stood against them. For all that she had been the bad guy, she never would have the danger of the moral high ground. You could crush anybody from up there and feel perfectly justified in doing so.

"I know I'm the last person you wanted to see, Gizmo, but I already broke your gear out of the lockdown. I'm the only person on guard-duty tonight and I still have an hour and a half before the shift-change."

Gizmo's glare settled into a milder glower. "I don't know if I can trust you again, Jinxie. You never were as bad as the rest of us."

"Not anymore, Giz." Nicknames were a good sign, she told herself. So why did she feel like Raven had her in a full-body forcefield? "I'm going to be Titan enemy number one, though, so I won't blame you if you and Mammoth want to head out on your own."

"Not me." When Mammoth made up his mind, he wouldn't be swayed for anyone or anything. "You came back for us, Jinx. Nobody else would have."

Gizmo was still frowning. "I don't know how long it's going to take for me to trust you. But I'll try if you'll come with us on a few of our usual trips. Paris won't know what hit it."

Jinx's smile was weak, but her hand didn't shake when she extended it toward the teammates that were inexplicably taking her back so easily. "Partners?"

"Partners," Gizmo said, reaching up to put his hand beside hers.

"Partners," Mammoth agreed, reaching down to join the three-person contact.

* * *

><p>When Jericho and Herald arrived on their shift, it took them the better part of two hours to realize that two of their frozen charges were missing. It took them two minutes to realize that Jinx wasn't responding to any calls on her com, and that Jericho had a new voice-mail. It only contained one word—'sorry.'<p> 


	4. Episode Four: London Bridge

_In response to an anonymous reviewer who knows far more about the Titans comic background than I do: I am trying to incorporate several details from the comics that the show didn't have time to manage, but I'm also working to stay true to the tone and the details of the show. As such, Slade is (sadly) more of a bwahaha villain than an antihero. (Although comics-Slade had moments edging on bwahaha within the comic.) _

**Season Six: Burning Bright**  
><strong>Episode Four: London Bridge <strong>

The Titans were finishing an increasingly elaborate breakfast when the call came. First, Cyborg had made an omelet for each Titan, then Starfire squeezed out fresh orange juice while only adding interesting ingredients to her own glass, and then Raven made toast that did not turn out to be charcoal. Beast Boy and Robin contributed by fetching plates and glasses. They were prepared for a good day of training, brainstorming, and ending the threat of Slade as soon as humanly-and-inhumanly possible.

That was when they heard the call.

"This is Herald reporting in."

"Go ahead," Cyborg said. He was the first to reach his communicator as it was built into his arm, but Robin wasn't far behind.

Robin's communicator was never far from his hand. "The channel is secure."

"We have a situation. Jinx went rogue on us, we think. She was on guard duty without Kid Flash, and when Jericho and I showed for the guard change, she was gone." Despite the urgency of the situation, Herald remained calm. "We didn't think much about it until we realized that Mammoth and Gizmo are missing."

A text arrived from Jericho moments later. _No signs of a struggle, but this doesn't make sense. Jinx and I send messages back and forth a lot. She was fine yesterday. _

"I'll get Kid Flash on the line," Robin said. He wouldn't dispute Jericho's impression just yet. "We need to make sure he's alright." He tapped in Kid Flash's code carefully. This was no time to make mistake and send the worldwide net of Titans into a panic that Jinx had more designs than her apparent betrayal. "Kid Flash, this is Robin."

"What's up?" the reply came without a discernible pause. "I was just finishing up with babysitting a bunch of politicians, no action necessary. Bit of a bore, really."

Cyborg should have talked to her. He knew what it was like to start wondering where the line between good and bad was when you erased all boundaries. "When did you part ways with Jinx?"

"A few hours ago, why? I mean—she's alright?" Kid Flash had never sounded so nervous. "I mean, she has to be, I just saw her. We broke it off, but she looked alright. She even said we could still be friends."

Nine hours ahead of California, Jericho was scowling. _Why did you break up with her? _appeared on everyone's communicator.

"I… um… wow this is going to sound bad. I have the attention span of a hyperactive gnat, and, well… I wanted to break it off before it got too involved. She's cool, and I'm glad she said we could be friends, but…" Kid Flash realized abruptly that they hadn't answered his question. "She _is _okay?"

"Gizmo and Mammoth are gone. Someone opened up the storeroom where we were keeping the defroster, and there aren't any signs of a struggle," Herald reported. "She mention anything to you?"

"It didn't have to be her!" Kid Flash was audibly upset. In the small window that showed his face, the communicator's image blurred from the speed at which he was flailing his arms. "I can't believe you all would turn on her so fast. She's had a lot of bad stuff happen to her, but that doesn't make her bad."

"Doesn't make her good, either," Herald replied calmly. "We have surveillance that Jericho just loaded up. There wasn't any coercion, she didn't look nervous, and the three of them left together. I think we need a report that the HIVE is back in business. They have good reason to come after any of us."

_Jinx wouldn't hurt anyone. _

"Maybe not, but she can raise hell when she wants to." Cyborg knew just how much damage the girl could do in practice when human lives weren't on the line. "Seriously, Kid Flash, that was dumb. _No _girl or guy means it when they offer to be friends right after a bad breakup."

"What would you know?" Kid Flash asked indignantly. "I'm the only Titan that's dated anybody!"

"Wrong. I dated a few girls in high school." Cyborg should have recognized the signs. Kid Flash and Jinx had spent more time talking to other people than they had to each other at the pizza place, and aside from the necessary carries, they had barely touched. "Trust me. When you break it off with a girl, especially when it's because you don't want to get serious, she's left hurting bad. Friend of mine made that mistake."

"Same here, when I was still in a private school," Robin said. "I couldn't be serious thanks to the night life, but she wanted to be. That's when I knew that dating someone was a mistake while in the hero business."

"We should probably send out a message to everybody," Beast Boy said. "We don't know what Jinx is up to, but she knows a lot about what we're up to." He didn't want to be the one that had to tell them all that Jinx had turned on them, but he wouldn't have to. That job always fell to the leader.

"I'm on it," Robin said. It was as if he had read Beast Boy's mind. "Everybody else, get ready. After we go over Cyborg's overrides, we need to go over just how we're going to fight Jinx when she knows our weaknesses."

* * *

><p>That night, Starfire and Robin's search for Slade began in Robin's office. At first, Starfire was honored to have been invited into the room that Robin considered more private than his bedroom, but she soon grew weary of listening to the quick patter of keys and the sound of a mouse clicking. She wished to do something, but it seemed rude to abandon Robin for the gym or for the television.<p>

"Friend Robin, I am curious about what you have said. Do you truly mean to never date?"

"I really don't think that's important." Robin shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He looked sure that Starfire would not stop the conversation before it started. "But… well, yes. It never has gone well for Batman, or even for the guys that got married. I don't want anybody to get hurt because of me."

Starfire couldn't bear to be rejected again or she might have suggested that he should date someone capable of defending herself. She would have said that she faced a daily risk of being harmed, or even being harmed to hurt _him, _but that would only make him withdraw from her yet again. It seemed that her rather hopeless infatuation with the Titans' leader would only continue. There was no one else for her, not until she could let her heart settle for never having him. Judging from her past poor history in attempting that very thing, she believed that it would take quite some time.

"Sometimes, I do wish that all of us were in less danger, but I do not believe that any of us will truly set aside our calling." This might be the only opportunity she had to make her piece without Robin's natural defensiveness coming into play. "Even if we should attend university while posing as the typical student, we will still be able to protect people and to ensure that those around us are safe."

"Speaking of university," Robin said, changing the topic from what she most cared to discuss, "we really should get everybody's applications ready soon. I have my admission set for September, but the rest of you have the recommendations to be a late admission. If not, I have a few connections to make sure Gotham University gives all of you the chance you deserve."

Starfire stifled a sigh and hid her frown. It was not Robin who was at fault for continuously wishing that things could be different when their current status was perfectly acceptable. "Perhaps we may discuss potential majors?" She would rather have him talk to her than silently stare at his computer screen.

Robin obliged, recommending several diverting career paths, and Starfire had the discussion to console her. Robin seemed determined to not feel the same, and it was obvious that he would not change his mind lightly even if she did get impatient enough to attempt kissing him a second time.

* * *

><p>Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven were not doing anything so sedentary. The three of them were all using their special senses to attempt to track down Slade. Between Cyborg's electronics, Beast Boy's senses of hearing and smell, and Raven's empathy, they stopped four muggings and an attempted robbery of a jewelry store. Raven's portals made it fast work to deposit the criminals in a designated holding cell as Cyborg sent a report to the on-duty police officers at the city jail.<p>

They found no traces of Slade despite their best efforts and four solid hours of scouring Slade's usual haunts. Cyborg found two abandoned lairs, and Beast Boy found another at the edge of the wide spread of apartment complexes. While Cyborg and Beast Boy searched for signs of Slade in the swathe of different rooms and homes, Raven watched their backs. If she attempted to scan half so many people with her empathy, she would likely be bedridden for days from the stress of so many foreign emotions.

The unexpected burden of empathy was within its very name. She did not simply sense the emotions of others. She felt them, and often she felt them as strongly as her own emotions. At times it felt close to impossible to sort her feelings from those of others. That had made her reluctant to cultivate a friendship with Starfire, at first, but Starfire had toned down her exhilaration in all things when she and Raven were speaking privately. After the Puppet King, Starfire knew just how overwhelming it could be and just how many things could break as a result of an overload.

When _not _using her special gifts, Raven's sight found the first real clue they had found all night. It wasn't anything that seemed useful, at first, and certainly didn't feel so vital as discovering the places that Slade had left behind. She had scanned the gutter as they moved through a rough part of town. What she had mistaken for a hypodermic syringe for contents not prescribed by any doctor was a very different sort of glass tube. It was precisely like the four darts that she had plucked from the were-beast's chest.

"Cyborg, Beast Boy, I found something." She had the sense to not touch it herself, as it could be some sort of bizarre trap, but she knew that Cyborg would be more careful. He picked it up delicately between two metal fingers to study the cracked glass.

Cyborg peered at the vial with his human eye and then the other. "The toxin's all leaked out by now, I think, but this is definitely the same type. I'll have to scan this back home to be sure that it's the same, but I'd certainly guess this is the real deal." He turned the vial in his hands so gently that the spiderweb cracks in the glass didn't spread. "I don't have any problems with were-beast, but let's not risk it. It takes too long for you to change back."

Beast Boy had looked away when Cyborg mentioned the risk, but he brightened at the reason. "No need to make Raven stay up until four in the morning again," he agreed. "I don't know if I thanked you for that, Raven."

His teammate was visibly flustered. "No thanks necessary. You'd do as much for me."

It was far better of a response than Beast Boy had expected. Raven rarely acknowledged that her teammates would do anything for her, or that they had been ready to die for her. She was still painfully shy in admitting that she felt emotions. "Anytime," Beast Boy promised, intentionally keeping his tone light.

"Anyway." He didn't want to leave any kind of tension in the three of them, not when they were the Titans outside of Robin and Starfire's perpetual orbit. "Slade can still get me to go Beast, I think, but last time it only worked because I was scared. I didn't know what I'd been shot with, then I thought that I'd hurt Robin… next time I won't be so nervous."

"We trust you," Cyborg said, clapping Beast Boy on the shoulder with his free hand. "We've also done enough for the night, so let's scout out the neighborhoods on our way back to the Tower."

* * *

><p>The Titans were wrapping up their fruitless scouting expedition when a forwarded text chimed on all five communicators. Jericho had sent a message on. It seemed that Jinx wasn't done with all of the team. Her bond with Jericho remained partially intact, and the green-eyed Titan did not seem inclined to sever it.<p>

_Don't worry about me, Jerry. I only preempted what would have happened without Kid Flash glued to my side. That said, keep both eyes open, because Slade is on the move again and he's crazier than before. Slade wants the three of us on his team again, and Gizmo and Mammoth are going to agree. They want revenge against all the Titans they can find, and I'm not so sure that I blame them. _

"That isn't good." As always, Raven showed a gift for underestimation. "They were one of the harder teams to deal with before."

"I'll start looking for incoming flights touching down in California." Robin ran a hand through his hair irritably, mussing the typical spikes. "I have a friend in Gotham that will help out. No offence meant, Cyborg, but she's even better at hacking."

"None taken," Cyborg promised. "I'm an amateur compared to people like Oracle."

"What do you think Slade wants?" Beast Boy unintentionally mirrored Robin's gesture of mussing his hair. "He could come after any of us, and he does tend to go one at a time. We should get you EMP-proof as soon as possible, Cy."

"It's in the works." Cyborg projected a hologram of a 3D model that he would incorporate into his chest, the center of his most important functions. "Secondary power supply inside a new alloy that should hypothetically resonate with most electromagnetic waves to keep them off the hardware."

"I'll help in the shop if you like." Raven sounded nothing more than bored, perhaps, but every one of them could read the intensity of the expression as a genuine offer.

Only Robin looked surprised at Raven's offer. Starfire talked with Raven about most everything, and Beast Boy often wandered into Cyborg's garage to talk. Beast Boy talked less when Raven was there, but generally Raven came up in their conversations. Three years later, Beast Boy was still keeping up his one-man crusade to improve the frequency of Raven's smiles. Someone had to do it. Lately, he was even making progress. Part of that was due to a Raven-sanctioned trip to Nevermore when she was halfway to frantic about nightmares where her father returned stronger than before. She had let him help her understand her own mind. Beast Boy might never feel so honored again.

"We all should be on the lookout." Cyborg nodded to Beast Boy. "He's not so creative lately, and he saw that Raven's the go-to for calming down Mr. Were-beast. I think he'll try again, just as he'll use past history against Raven and Robin. Starfire, we can brainstorm later about potential Tamaranean weaknesses."

"I am unsure what how he would choose to attack me beyond threats to those I hold dear." Starfire drifted closer to the ground as she imagined just what the madman might do in the name of hurting her. "Truly, I believe we are best fit to protect all of you that I may feel assured in your safety."

"No small tasks," Cyborg quipped before moving back to the serious tone of their talk. "We'll get on it, Starfire, and sometime we'll have to ask Jericho just what he knows about the guy. Whatever it is, Slade didn't want to hurt him."

Unexpectedly, Raven was the one to speak up. "I'll ask him. If he doesn't want to talk about it, I'll know before he has to write it down."

"It's a plan, then," Robin said. He didn't look happy, but he did look confident. "We'll watch each other's backs close, and if one of us is threatened… we'll remember that all of us are threatened. We can't stand alone against Slade." As Robin warmed to his topic, the Teen Titans all began to believe that they did have the chance to rid themselves of Slade's threats once and for all. "Raven, contact Jericho when you're ready. Cyborg, you're on analysis of the toxin compared to the original, and backwards engineering how on earth Slade made it. Starfire, you're going to be doing aerial sweeps with Beast Boy. I'm coordinating and directing further research."

"Done," Beast Boy agreed solemnly. He could be serious when it suited him.

"On it." Cyborg still had the vial cupped in his hand.

"Just as you say, friend Robin." Starfire would let no harm come to her friends.

Raven was the one to hold her hand into the center of the group. Four hands joined hers. "Go team," she said dryly, but with real emotion buried behind the unenthusiastic delivery. "Let's end this once and for all."


	5. Episode Five: The Devil You Know

_Jericho's secret is taken directly from the comics._

**Season Six: Burning Bright****  
>Episode Five: The Devil You Know<strong>

Raven was the first of the Titans to find vital information, but it wasn't at all the story that she had expected.

Jericho had agreed to come to the Tower to speak with her about Slade. The pair of them sat on the roof for the talk, and it was hard to say just which of them was more uncomfortable. Jericho knew what the conversation was going to be about, and Raven knew her interpersonal skills still needed work to put it lightly. There was no chance that she would be able to be sympathetic and kind-hearted about it the way that Starfire could manage, or turn it into an easy talk like Beast Boy might be able to do. She settled for a blunt approach coupled with a tentatively deliberate use of empathy. Instead of passively hearing what the world was feeling, she'd try to be sure about what Jericho felt.

"You know something about Slade," Raven began quietly. Starfire had taught her that serious conversations were easier in quieter tones, and that it made the voice sound gentler. "If I can let it stay between us, I will, but right now all of want to stop Slade. We don't want him dead by any means, but he is a threat to everyone."

_Beast Boy, _Jericho typed into his communicator.

Raven nodded curtly. She had wanted to avoid that subject, but that hardly was fair when she was asking about something that Jericho had kept so personal. "Luckily, that didn't end the way Slade predicted. We think Slade was trying to use Beast Boy to hurt Robin." Raven couldn't suppress a frown at the thought of what that might have done to their team. "We're concerned that Cyborg or Starfire will be next. Slade's branching out."

Jericho was the one to frown after those words. _He's gone after you. _It wasn't a question.

Raven had expected that to come up eventually, but hadn't thought that the topic would arise so soon. "Yes. He did. I… it's hard to discuss without the particulars. After our last fight with Terra, we had strong reason to believe that Slade was dead. He was, but he made a deal with Trigon."

Jericho's bright green eyes widened. Raven didn't think he realized that he was shaking his head in denial.

"I know because…" The words were hard. Raven didn't let herself look away from her teammate. "Trigon is my father. My mother was human, but that doesn't change what I am."

Jericho stared at her intently. Raven had the feeling that he was making some kind of judgment, even before he made the decision to slowly type out his next sentence. Somehow, Raven had passed.

_Slade is mine. My father, that is. He's also part of the reason I can't talk anymore. _Jericho unwound his scarf to reveal a thin white scarf across his throat. _It's a long story. _

Raven didn't ask just what that story was. She confined herself to wondering how both of them could be so calm, but she supposed there wasn't any other choice. They could be upset about their fathers for years, or they could accept it and try to be the better person. It wasn't in either of their natures to spend forever hoping that the past could change.

In the face of such calm, Raven could be sure about her own emotions. She wasn't acting because of _his _impulses and feelings, she was acting on her own. "I'm sorry we have that in common, but it's good to know that I'm not the only one that's had to stand against a father. Mine wanted to take over the world."

_And mine wants to hurt all of you. I don't know if I'll directly stand against him yet, but I'll tell you what I know. _

Neither of them made a move to immediately clarify just what it was that Jericho knew. They both sat back in the sunshine, and they both had the quiet relief of knowing that they weren't alone. Later, when Jericho took up his communicator, Raven was ready to learn all that she could.

* * *

><p>While Raven and Jericho were on the roof, Cyborg was in his lab muttering very impolite things about Jericho's father. Slade hadn't replicated the original toxin that had prompted Beast Boy's transformation. He'd created a purified version of that toxin with adrenaline as well as a severe muscle irritant to exaggerate the effects of the strange green chemical that didn't resemble any sort of compound he could find in research or development.<p>

By the time Robin came to check on his progress, Cyborg had the answer. "I've found somebody buying several of the pieces that went into the toxin. Slade has a pseudonym, Rob, or maybe Wilson is really has last name. No way of telling him. I know where he got the components." Cyborg had found a trace. He'd leave the details up to Robin. "I still don't know how he was so sure that they would send Beast Boy straight into were-beast."

"It's still good work, Cyborg." Since the Brotherhood of Evil, Robin had been freer with casual praise not directed toward Starfire. "I don't think we need to worry too much about Beast Boy after what happened. He'll fight for us no matter what form he's in."

"Unless Slade finds a way to change the mix of this. I'm worried about whatever this is." Cyborg tapped the monitor to show a computer-generated look at a strange protein with four separate unnatural components that no science on record had seen. "Slade's too good at what he does with toxins and nanobots. I haven't found any proof, but I think there might have been more nanotechnology to deliver the drug more effectively. I was working on traces of the toxin to start and might have mixed the mini-robotics he likes."

Robin scowled at the created enzyme on the screen. "Are you going to let him know?"

"Might let Raven handle it. She and BB are pretty close, lately, and he'd take about anything easier if she said it." It was past time that Cyborg was able to talk to someone about what he saw. Starfire could keep secrets, but it wasn't fair to ask her not to help two people be happy. As much as she'd like to help, however, some things jut took time. "They're both too shy to admit to anything just yet, but I know that you'll leave well enough alone."

"Starfire might not." Robin knew just what Cyborg had been thinking. "It will sound better coming from Raven anyway. She has the best idea about what it's like to lose control for something that isn't her fault."

"Besides that, I want Raven to know just what's happening. She has the best chance of getting Beast Boy back to us if Slade ups the dose on whatever this is that guaranteed Beast Boy would end up angry about everything." Cyborg changed settings to let the molecule rotate again. "Best as I can tell, this hooks up to everything alpha and beta in the sympathetic nervous system. Something about it might not let fleeing be an option."

"Fight or flight, for the sympathetics?" Robin asked. When Cyborg nodded, Robin shook his head. "This isn't any kind of good. Slade's too far ahead of us. Sometimes it feels like he knows more about how our team works than we do."

"There's a difference this time. We're not waiting for him to work against us. As far as I'm concerned, I should be okay. I added in a few shutdown protocols in case he figured out how to turn me against you. As soon as any of you come in my sights, everything but baseline goes offline." Cyborg changed the display to show a new model of communicator. "This one's for the main group only. There's a new voice-activated setting that should respond to any of you when any communicator's in-range. I trust you all to use this if I'm about to hurt somebody."

It was a heavy responsibility. Robin agreed without hesitation. "He's tried to do use us against each other before. It's a good thought, and you know that we won't want it to come to that."

"Mostly, I'm worried about Star." Cyborg shut the monitor down to avoid the pained look on Robin's face. Cyborg wasn't going to pressure his leader even if he did think that Robin was being moronic. Distance wasn't helping Starfire. More happiness would only make her more effective in the field. "Slade's too good at manipulating people."

"We'll watch her back." Robin's voice was rough. "We'll watch everybody's backs. If we're not careful about staying together, Slade will rip all of us apart."

* * *

><p>Far above Jump City, the Titan under discussion was peering down at the tiny people below her. "I am amazed that you are able to see so much, friend Beast Boy." The green golden eagle flying nearby made a sound of agreement. "I am unsure what it is that we are meant to find, however. There is far too much motion in the district of warehouses at this time."<p>

The golden eagle shifted into a parrot that flapped its way to Star's extended hand. "I'm not finding anything," the green scarlet macaw said. "The problem is that I don't have any flying form that sees well from this high up. I'd have to get closer at night. Even now, I'd see better if we made a few low sweeps."

"I will consult friend Robin," Starfire said, carefully tucking Beast Boy against her side so that she could tap the buttons on the communicator she held in her other hand. "Robin, this is Starfire. We desire to move in closer for a more optimal view."

"Go ahead, Starfire. Raven is still talking to Jericho, but Cyborg and I will be out to join you shortly," Robin replied promptly. "We'll all compare notes later."

"Duly noted, fearless leader!" Starfire chirped, mostly for the way that it would make Robin blush. She could tell from the communicator's screen that she was not disappointed. There were many advantages to listening to the constant banter between Cyborg and Beast Boy. "We shall endeavor also to question workers that appear friendly about any unusual activity."

"Great idea, Starfire." Robin looked to his left, presumably to better see Cyborg. "Expect us in fifteen minutes if traffic is as bad as we're predicting."

"Done," Beast Boy said before his macaw form shifted smoothly back into a golden eagle. He fell from Starfire's arms for several yards before unfurling his wings and swooping into a wide arc over the target that Robin had chosen as the most likely.

Starfire smiled at Beast Boy's exuberant flight. It always pleased her to know that someone else found flight so exhilarating. Raven had grown much braver in her emotions of late, Starfire knew, and it seemed that Raven might yet learn how to truly express her enjoyment. Starfire's thoughts grew less distracted as she descended to the level of the warehouse, just in time to notice Beast Boy in the form of a green sparrow perched above an open warehouse door. "Friend Beast Boy?"

He landed on the ground in a crouch after changing from sparrow to human in midair. "Something isn't right, Starfire. I think we should wait to investigate until the rest of the Titans get here."

"Too late, crudbrains," said a voice that Beast Boy should have expected. When he turned, Gizmo had a tranquilizer gun aimed straight at him with a too-familiar green liquid visible with human eyes from twenty feet away.

Starfire winced when she heard the sound of a gun, but Gizmo had not fired. The darts hit Beast Boy's unprotected back while he had been staring at the one-time HIVE operative. "Robin," Starfire said into her communicator before any of the expected transformation could begin. Her leader had to know the urgency of the situation. "We are at the warehouse you suspected, and—"

That was all Starfire had time to say before her communicator's screen changed to blue. The communicator itself was not responsive. She had time to remember Cyborg's comments about a pulse of electromagnetism before she realized that Beast Boy was not changing, and that he was not on his feet. The darts in his back had been green, but the only effect had been to leave Beast Boy crumpled on the ground of the alley.

"Friend Beast Boy!"

"I don't believe he can hear you, Starfire," Slade said from the shadows.


End file.
